Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource
Nothing about being a home-hospital teacher is normal.
A Los Angeles Unified educator drives nearly 22 miles from one student’s home in Venice Beach to another’s in East Los Angeles — and another 20 miles to Maravista, lugging tote bags with school supplies, books, plants and paintbrushes.
Each bag is dedicated to one of her students — from transitional kindergartners to high school seniors gearing up for graduation and new beginnings.
What her students have in common is illness, ranging from leukemia to eating disorders. And she is one of many teachers tending to their education at the one-of-a-kind Berenece Carlson Home Hospital School.
“In a student’s very, very trying times,” said the teacher who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), “no matter what kind of condition the student is in or has been diagnosed with, we become part of the students’ weekly or daily” life.
The school, established in 1970, is intended to provide an education for LAUSD students who are ill or receiving medical treatment and unable to stay in school, sometimes for several years.
It also enables students to receive a more individualized education; teachers can meet students at home or in the hospital for roughly five hours each week.
Classes usually focus on math and English, but sometimes they extend to other subjects or topics that students are interested in.
“She really went above and beyond for both of us,” said Karina Rodriguez, the mother of one of the anonymous teacher’s students. “What she did for my daughter, she did for me. She’s my child.”
But the school has been engulfed in conflict between some teachers who teach in person and those who taught through an online option called the Carlson Home Online Academy, or CHOA, which, according to a district policy bulletin, was established in 2018 to give “homebound students synchronous home instruction in a web-based classroom setting.”
Conflict surrounding the online academy
Despite the work of dedicated instructors, both the in-person and online programs at the Berenece Carlson Home Hospital School have struggled for years with waves of instability, including the recent closure of the online program (CHOA), which has deprived some students who are ill of the individualized education they need.
In 1999, when the California Department of Education began tracking campuses by school type, Carlson was classified as a special education school, according to a spokesperson for the agency. A decade later, the Department of Education added a designation for home-hospital schools, but LAUSD did not reclassify Carlson as a “Home and Hospital” program until last July.
That reclassification came amid pressure from a group of teachers teaching in-person, who began sounding alarms, claiming during the fall of 2023 that Carlson’s online program violated the state’s education code requiring home-hospital schools to operate in person.
The teachers also claimed in emails to district officials that many students in need of in-person instruction were automatically funneled into the online program — and that more than 80 students went without adequate instruction for about two months. EdSource reviewed the emails.
“They tell families there are no teachers available,” said Lisa Robertson, who, since 2009, has taught in the homes of students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
“The families are dealing with the crisis of having a sick child,” she said. “And then, they’re lost in the system.”
Conflict between some home-hospital teachers and those who supported the online program mounted. Another criticism of the online program is that several of its teachers rely on lessons from Edgenuity, an online learning platform, which some hospital-home teachers say places excessive demands on some students with severe illnesses.
Online instructors maintained that their program enabled students to take classes in more subject areas than the in-person program, providing them with a better track to graduate — all while giving them additional flexibility beyond what is provided through LAUSD’s other virtual academies.
“I’ve had cancer,” Robertson said. “There is no way I could have gotten up at 8 in the morning and sat through six hours clicking away at a computer.”
But Kevin Byrd, who taught in the online program, said the program allowed educators to support several students taking different subjects — say, biology, chemistry and health — simultaneously, adding that even though students worked remotely, the online program helped students build camaraderie among their peers.
“There was an understanding about the students, even in middle school, that we’re all kind of supporting each other,” Byrd said. “And just because we have this condition doesn’t really affect our ability to learn.”
The aftermath of CHOA’s closure
Amid the claim that the online program violated California’s education code, the Los Angeles Unified School District closed the online program altogether in July. The closure, however, left about 170 sick students and several educators unsure of where to go next.
“Programming previously offered through the Carlson Home Online Academy was discontinued for the 2024-25 school year as CDE (California Department of Education) clarified that virtual instruction is not part of a home hospital program,” an LAUSD spokesperson wrote in a statement to EdSource. “Home hospital instruction is to be provided on an individual basis aligned with the hours set forth by law.”
Online teachers caught a whiff of their program’s impending closure in late March and immediately started a petition to keep it open; that petition received more than 600 signatures.
“It’s good to have several options, especially for these students who need to be accommodated and have special circumstances,” said Byrd, who started the petition.
“The fact that the second-largest district in the country and the largest in the state is limiting an option for these types of students is really discouraging.”
Since the online program’s closure, most of its former teachers like Rene Rances have become home-hospital teachers — but others have opted to leave Carlson altogether and teach elsewhere. Rances said he is considering leaving the district, too.
“It’s very, very demoralizing,” he said.
A spokesperson for LAUSD maintained, however, that the district’s changes are in keeping with California’s laws; they also said in a statement to EdSource that families whose children were in the online program were informed of their options “through letters, emails, phone calls, and several community meetings.”
Those options included Carlson’s home-hospital programs or enrolling at one of the district’s virtual academy schools, which don’t always provide the same level of flexibility to take varying course loads, said Tammy Koch, Carlson’s counselor.
Koch confirmed that some students left the online program — only to be referred back to the in-person home-hospital program.
“We had students that sometimes can’t handle a full course load. … Sometimes, I had students taking three classes. Sometimes, they took four,” Koch said, referring to her students who used to be enrolled in the online program. “But you don’t have that flexibility at a virtual academy,” she said, because students have to take a full course load there. “It’s just not the same.”
